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This is probably meant for servers

While most of the Rage family was EOL'd in the late nineties some derivatives were in widespread use on server motherboards so there's good chance that there are still Linux users with them. Wikipedia suggests that server motherboards using Rage XL chips were made until 2006: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Rage#RAGE_XL

No matter how few people it is, there will be those who simply want to get a really old machine running and use linux to access new features and speed. These can become the most loyal open source users, the ones that people forget about.

this is why i hate Linux.. can't this man find something more useful to do with is time, like working on products that people actually use?

It is quite likely that the person working on the code uses the card himself, and even if it is only for nostalgia he his still filling a need, and one that is quite likely his own. If only every Linux user was as capable to make what they want to see happen rather than just whining about it on forums.

Can't this man find something more useful to do with is time, like working on products that people actually use?

The Rage chips lived a fairly long life as server products, so modesetting support for them is something people actually use. In addition, the dev is probably learning a good bit from the experience and may use that knowledge in a future project. Of course, I'm sure he'll seek your approval for the next project he works on...

this is why i hate Linux.. can't this man find something more useful to do with is time, like working on products that people actually use?

My wife's secondary laptop is still a G4 iBook with a Rage 128... I last used it a week ago. I have been considering installing either an updated MacOS on it (10.5), or just going straight to a PPC linux distro. If the rage128 x.org driver gets updated, maybe that'll sway my decision (bonus points if someone ports the old dri1 mesa driver to DRI2 and KMS).

I believe that rage 128 chips also shipped on quite a few server boards for years after the rage128 had become obselete.